Q&A: Science Pop Songsters

OPINION NATURE|Vol 460|27 August 2009

Q&A: Science pop songsters The US band They Might Be Giants has played rock to adults for more than two decades — and to children since 2002. Next week it releases the album Here Comes Science, with educational tunes about the elements and evolution. John Linnell, who fronts the band with John Flansburgh, explains why a science-friendly thread runs through their music.

Your 1987 remake of the 1959 children’s song ‘Why Does the Sun Shine?’ is still popular. Why did you cover it?

We have songs about science and also about S. GRIES/GETTY the pro-science culture of our childhood — the post-war science boosterism that was going on. The science record that we covered that track from was part of the post-Sputnik period in US history when there was a lot of interest in getting kids into science.

Was science a missed calling? I would have been a crummy scientist but I would have been enthusiastic. I like science a lot and it’s something that I think about all the time, almost as an amateur. It was a nice convergence of personal interests and a logical next step that we did an album about science.

How does this follow on from your previous records for children? We put out Here Come the ABCs as a placeholder. John Linnell (above left) and John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants hope We were not overly their next album for children (inset) will help boost interest in science. concerned about teaching kids the alphabet because you worry that this In the new album you write a musical they are going to learn the might alienate some retraction: ‘Why Does the Sun Really alphabet anyway. It was a listeners? Shine?’ Why set the record straight? pretext for entertainment. John Flansburgh took We overstated the case in saying that the The follow-up with the the bull by the horns by original song is fatally flawed, because a numbers was an obvious writing that song and lot of the information in it is good. The choice — although we were resistant to doing addressing that situation, which is that Sun does convert hydrogen into helium the Here Come the 123s because it was so religion cannot take the place of science. and there’s a nuclear reaction and that’s the obvious. Science was a departure from that It’s not something you can tiptoe around. source of the explosive radiative energy pattern. And that was really exciting. We It’s important that everybody gets what coming out of the Sun. The only thing that got to do something personal to us with the the discussion is about. If we’re talking was seriously wrong with the original song is full promotional machinery of the Disney about the history of Earth, we can’t rely that the Sun is not gas, it’s plasma. It’s one of corporation behind it. on religious tradition to tell us all the those modern distinctions that was lost on information. He says it in the song: as the writers in the fifties. From the first song, ‘Science is Real’, this beautiful as the stories are, they don’t tell album seems to be making a statement. us everything we need to know. It’s an old What’s next? Why is that important? complaint on the part of scientists, but it I wish we could do a second volume of the It seems that science has suffered in this bears repeating. science because there’s a lot more stuff we country recently, so it was political in a haven’t covered. I don’t know, maybe that’s way. There has been some scepticism about Did you hire a fact-checker? going to be our next move. We could spend a science in the past 25 years that has been We did. Eric Siegel from the New York Hall lot more time on science. ■ unfortunate. There’s a decadent quality to of Science listened to everything and gave Interview by Brendan Maher, Nature’s Biology that — that the culture has lost its way. us very useful information, only some of Features Editor. which we entirely comprehended. He was Your lyrics talk about evolution being pointing out, also, things in the videos that Here Comes Science will be released digitally real and how stories about angels and were misleading or not making the point in on 1 September, and as a CD/DVD set on unicorns are just that, stories. Did the right way. 22 September on Idlewild/Disney Sound .